1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to improvements in devices and methods for cutting food products such as potatoes, into lattice or waffle-cut slices. More particularly, this invention relates to a lattice cutting or slicing machine for cutting a succession of potatoes or the like traveling along a flow path into lattice or waffle-cut slices, and a system for selectively or simultaneously employing multiple such slicing machines in parallel.
2. Related Art
Potato slices having a variety of shapes, such as having a lattice or waffle-cut geometry, have become popular food products. Lattice or waffle-cut potato slices are characterized by corrugated cut patterns on opposite sides of each slice. The opposing cut patterns are angularly oriented relative to each other, such as at approximately right angles. It is desirable that the troughs or valleys of the opposing corrugated cut patterns are sufficiently deep to partially intersect one another, resulting in a potato slice having a generally rectangular grid configuration with a repeating pattern of small through openings. Relatively thin lattice-cut slices of this type can be processed to form lattice-cut potato chips. Thicker lattice cut slices are typically processed by par frying and/or finish frying to form lattice-cut or waffle-cut French fries.
Slicing machines have been developed for production cutting of potatoes and other food products into lattice-cut slices or other shapes, such as crinkle-cut, etc. These machines differ in many respects from more conventional cutting machines. For example, straight-cut French fry slices are typically cut by means of a so-called water knife, which can have a very high throughput rate. The speed of lattice-cut and other slicing machines, on the other hand, is generally slower, and often causes users to employ several such machines in parallel to meet consumer demand. As a result, the capital equipment cost tends to be relatively high. There are also some possible failure modes of some lattice cutting machines that are desirable to avoid.
The present disclosure is directed toward one or more of the above issues.